


Crack

by standbygo



Series: NaNoWriMo 2013 One Word Prompt Challenge [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bromance, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John learns about Sherlock's history with drugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crack

**Author's Note:**

> NaNoWriMo One Word Prompt Challenge: "Crack", from Kyla.

_Excited_. No. _Thrilled_. Not quite. _In a tizzy_. Er, no.

Now that his blog was well established and he seemed to have a following, John often would begin drafting his entries in advance, structuring them, finding the right words, sometimes while the moment was actually happening. Obviously he didn’t do this in the midst of a fight or a chase, that would be stupid and dangerous, but rather in cabs on their way to or from a case, or waiting for Lestrade to get through the paperwork, or times, like now, when he was trying to keep up with Sherlock’s pace as they walked through St. Bart’s hallways.

_Giddy_. That’s it.

Sherlock was giddy, had been giddy since Molly had called him an hour ago with a rare gift – a gift only Sherlock Holmes would appreciate – a corpse in her morgue, in relatively good shape, with no family to claim the body. It was a fine opportunity for Sherlock to conduct some of his (more grisly) experiments that could help him in future cases. 

John struggled to keep up with Sherlock as they walked towards the morgue. Not only did the lanky git have legs up to his neck that allowed him to cover ground faster than John, but John had the honour of carrying a (heavy) satchel of tools for Sherlock to use. He’d avoiding watching the packing, and had resolved to spend the time while Sherlock worked treating Molly to a coffee in the cafeteria. The less he saw the better – he’d hear all about it for days anyway.

Sherlock pushed open the door of the morgue and without ceremony called out, “Where, Molly?”

Molly smiled shyly at Sherlock, and slightly more boldly at John. “Hello Sherlock, hello John,” she said. “Over here.” 

She led them over to one of the benches, where a zipped body bag was laid out. John dumped the satchel on a nearby table.

“Tell me,” Sherlock said, as he began to pull items from the bag and lay them out on the table. John shuddered and turned away when he saw the ball gag.

“Male, age approximately thirty five to forty. Um. Found last night under Cheswick Bridge, south side.”

“Drowned?”

“No, he was well clear of the water. Overdose. Body in relatively good condition, it was cool enough last night. So. When he came in I called you straight off.” Molly smiled, shifting from foot to foot, as if expecting a sweet for a job well done. 

“Excellent,” Sherlock said, turning away from his horrible tools towards the corpse. “Let’s have a look, shall we?” He unzipped the body bag.

John was half turned to Molly to ask her if she wanted coffee, when he became aware that Sherlock had gone utterly still and silent, staring into the bag.

“Sherlock?” John said, taken aback.

“Burn it,” Sherlock said, and turned on his heel and walked out.

~

By the time John had hastily thrown all Sherlock’s tools back into the satchel, all the while exchanging ‘what the hell?’ looks with Molly, and made his way out to the street, Sherlock was long gone. It took John ages to get his own cab – when he was with Sherlock, cabs magically appeared, but when John was solo he seemed to be invisible – and then caught every damn red light between St. Bart’s and Baker Street. By the time he was fitting his key into the lock of 221B he was in a fine bad mood.

“What the hell was that all about, Sherlock?” he shouted as he walked in. “Apart from a bloody waste of time? Did you do that just to tease poor Molly, she does nothing but favours for you, it’s a wonder she doesn’t get in trouble for all she does…”

John stopped and saw Sherlock sitting in his chair, with a fire crackling in the fireplace. Sherlock was staring at the flames with a strangely blank look on his face. John’s anger vanished instantly in concern.

“Sherlock?” John sat across from Sherlock, leaning forward. “What’s wrong?”

Sherlock looked up at John briefly, than back into the fire. “I knew him.”

“Oh God. I’m sorry. One of your homeless network?”

“No. He…” Sherlock hesitated, cleared his throat. John had never seen Sherlock hesitate before. “He was my dealer, once.”

“Oh,” John said. He felt like anything he could possibly say had been punched out of his gut.

Silence spun out between them for a time: Sherlock lost in thought, and John trying to imagine how the sight of the man from Sherlock’s past would affect him. Sherlock hardly ever spoke of his past, and never about his drug use. John was of course hugely curious, but respected his friend enough to allow him privacy on this topic.

“Did you know,” Sherlock said suddenly, breaking the silence, “that Mummy and Father both expected me to be a civil servant, like Mycroft?”

“Good Lord,” John said. “I can’t even imagine you as a government lackey.”

Sherlock smiled small. “They pushed me to take all the ‘right’ courses at uni – political science, social science, geoeconomics – all that dreadful stuff.”

“And you turned around and took – what, chemistry, psychology…?”

“Amongst others. I took what interested me, without a specific path or career goal. They hated it. They let me know in no uncertain terms that whatever choice I made, it was a bad one. I started choosing courses that I knew specifically would upset them. The Christmas dinner when I announced I was taking a drama course the next semester was quite…” 

“…dramatic?”

Sherlock smiled at John, his genuine smile. “Just so.” The smile faded. “I dropped out of the course, obviously, bored. I would take a course, learn what I wanted, then drop out. It became a challenge to me to find new ways to annoy them, scandalize them. Then in third year I discovered cocaine, which fit the bill nicely.”

John thought ruefully that Sherlock would be the only person to take up cocaine just to be irritating.

“I kept telling myself for the longest time it was just an experiment, studying biometric reactions to the drug, and that I would stop whenever I wished. I had money to do as I would, time enough because I stopped going to classes, and Mickey-” Sherlock nodded towards the satchel, and by extension, the morgue, “-Mickey seemed to have an indefinite supply.” 

“When did you realize you were addicted?” John asked.

“I suspect my overdose was a good indicator,” Sherlock answered, locking eyes with John.

John didn’t shock easily, and he had suspected something like this lay in Sherlock’s past. He said nothing, but gazed evenly at his friend, allowing him time and space to talk should he wish.

“You’re the writer here, but if you will allow a metaphor?” Sherlock held his hands out in front of him, palms down, thumbs tucked in, his index fingers pressed together. “This,” he said, elevating his left hand slightly, “was my family, the civil service, everything they wanted for me that I hated. And this,” lifting his right hand, “was what I wanted – chemistry, science, puzzles, biology – even bloody Stanislavsky.” His hands pressed together again. “I walked the line between them for as long as could before I realized it wasn’t a line, but rather a crack – if you’ll pardon the pun – between two huge cliffs. And I fell in.”

“And your family found out?”

“Given that it happened the day of Father’s funeral it was inevitable.”

That did shock John. “Jesus, Sherlock,” he said.

“Mycroft found me and got me into an ambulance, then went to the funeral and told Mummy I was ill. I’m sure she thought I was just hungover. I was in rehab before they’d finished shovelling the dirt into his grave.”

Though the words were bitter, Sherlock’s voice remained calm and even.

“I tried to break out, of course. I made it out once, and Mycroft found me. He made a deal with me – I would finish rehab, and he and Mummy would … back off. Mycroft promised to find something suitable for me. And the day I finished he drove me to New Scotland Yard and introduced me to Lestrade.

“I wasn’t stupid, of course, I knew that it was a double edged sword. The cases kept me interested and occupied, and Lestrade would inform Mycroft if I ever seemed to be using again. It wasn’t the threat of Mycroft that kept me away from the drugs, but the threat of taking away the cases – I became as addicted to them as I had been to the cocaine. But the hunger was always there.”

Silence fell over the room again. John worked on absorbing this new information, which explained so much about Sherlock, his dependence on his work, and his fraught relationship with his brother and with Lestrade. He thought how lucky it was that Sherlock was alive; many with addictions and the money to spare often didn’t. He imagined how the sight of the corpse of his old dealer, who clearly had continued on the path that Sherlock had left, would affect Sherlock. 

He also realized how open Sherlock was being with his past, the ugliness of the mistakes he had made, and how he must value John to share this with him.

“Do you remember our first case, John, the cabbie?” Sherlock said suddenly, breaking John’s chain of thought.

“Of course I do.” 

“You recall Lestrade and his hooligans searching for drugs?”

“They never found anything.”

“Nor did you or Mrs. Hudson find anything when you searched – oh, don’t deny it, I know you did.”

“I know you knew,” John said. “No, I never found anything. And I grew up searching for bottles of gin to hide from my father, and then later from Harry.” 

“I will grant, you searched thoroughly, and left very few indicators of your search. Anyone else would not have noticed.” John acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “You said something that night, that first night. You were absolutely adamant that I could not possibly be a user, an addict. You didn’t believe Lestrade, didn’t even believe me.” 

Sherlock seemed to be mesmerized by the fire, avoiding John’s eyes. “You were the first person that assumed the best about me, not the worst.”

John clenched his jaw, angry at a world that allowed a man like Sherlock should get to the age of thirty-four before anyone believed in him.

“It’s been eight years since I used cocaine,” Sherlock said. “But the desire to do so never went away. I always wanted to know that I could, if I wanted.”

Sherlock reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a tiny baggie of white powder. He held it in the palm of his hand where John could see it.

“I hid it very well,” Sherlock said with a small smile, “but I always knew where it was, if I wanted it. But today, when I saw Mickey, I realized that I don’t want it anymore.”

And he threw the packet into the fire, where it wrinkled and vanished in a quick puff of blue flame.   

John looked at Sherlock and saw not one jot of regret in his eyes.

“Thank you, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock nodded, staring at the fire. Suddenly he clapped his hands on the arms of his chair. “No matter, I can run out and get more at any point.”

“You dick,” John said, as he threw his pillow into Sherlock’s grinning face. 

  _End_  



End file.
